


and the birds sing

by celaenos



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, KEYLETH HAS HER MOM BACK AND FOLKS I WILL NEVER RECOVER, Mother-Daughter Relationship, One Shot, spoilers for campaign 2 ep 107
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:27:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26239339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celaenos/pseuds/celaenos
Summary: She hasn’t seen her mother in years—thirty-three years and twelve days, not that she’s been counting—but, it hasn’t been so long that Keyleth doesn’t need to take more than one look at the woman andknow.
Relationships: Keyleth & Vilya | Viridian
Comments: 48
Kudos: 353





	and the birds sing

**Author's Note:**

> I'LL NEVER RECOVER MY BEAUTIFUL DRUID HAS HER MOM BACK I'M SO FUCKING HAPPY FOR HER

The tree opens up behind her.

Keyleth feels it—she always does, these days, so tuned into Zephrah that it’s almost like… it’s a part of her, in a way she never expected when she took the mantle.

It’s not the entirety of Zephrah, but a lot of it. The cherry blossom tree speaks to her in a way that makes her feel a little guilty, sometimes. She always makes sure to visit Whitestone and speak to the Sun Tree the same amount, just in case.

Not the point, but—

The cherry blossom tree opens. They aren’t expecting any visitors, and there aren’t a lot of druids who know to travel through here, not many that Keyleth doesn’t know herself. Not many that would come unannounced. A child hollers out, and when Keyleth turns… time stops.

(It doesn’t, Keyleth has experienced a time stop spell, she knows what that feels like, and this isn’t it but _time stops)._

She hasn’t seen her mother in years—thirty-three years and twelve days, not that she’s been counting—but, it hasn’t been so long that Keyleth doesn’t need to take more than one look at the woman and _know._

 _Tree Stride_ lasts for only six seconds. Keyleth knows this, she’s cast it herself a thousand times over, at this point. But, it still feels like an eternity that Vilya stands there, bathed in the sunset while cherry blossoms fall down around her—like a painting. There’s no sound in Keyleth’s ears but the madness of her own heartbeat, the colossal sound of something rushing downhill; her hands are shaking, when they come up to grab at the necklace that belonged to Vilya. (Korrin had given it to her the day that she left for her Aramenté, despite Keyleth’s protests). She clings to it now, like it might disappear any second along with the woman herself, as quickly as she came. Absently, Keyleth realizes that neither of them has moved. That she can see the form of a small halfling woman from somewhere off behind her mother, beaming happily. That the woman is looking at her with such… there is so much emotion in her face that Keyleth cannot decipher it all. She has no idea what her own face looks like in response, but she knows that she is crying. Vilya smiles at her and Keyleth sucks in a wet, ragged gasp, and then she _runs._

Keyleth slams into her mother the way she did when she was three, seven, twelve, not at all the way that a forty-seven-year-old woman should. Vilya holds her like she doesn’t care. Clutching at her with the same ferocity that Keyleth is clinging, terrified this is going to end up as some trick, some horrible spell, and if Keyleth can hold on tight enough, she can keep her mother there.

“Mama?” she whispers, feeling all of four years old again. Her voice sounds like it’s fallen into pieces, leaking out everywhere. 

“It’s me,” she manages to say. Then, Vilya breaks, sobbing, and holding Keyleth so tightly that it almost hurts. But it’s the good kind of hurt, a hurt that tells you that you’re alive, that you can still feel.

“Are you really here?” Keyleth asks; she doesn’t mean for to sound as childish as it does. It just falls out of her mouth before she can stop it.

Vilya pulls back slightly and cups Keyleth’s face, she is still taller than Keyleth. Keyleth shot up sometime around her seventeen birthday, suddenly a gangly teenager towering most of her peers at six feet, knocking into everything and taking up space that never belonged to her before. She had worried that when her mother came back, she wouldn’t look like her little girl anymore. Suddenly knowing that simple fact sends Keyleth over the edge, it’s the last straw, somehow and Keyleth can’t breathe she’s crying so hard.

Unconsciously, she is aware of Vilya tugging Keyleth down to the dirt, pulling her half into her lap and stroking her hair, mumbling reassuring nonsense as she holds her. Keyleth knows, after a while, that her father comes running up the hill—one of the children must have run for him—and he stands there, gaping and crying above them for a moment before he falls to his knees and clings to Vilya, too. Keyleth doesn’t know how long they stay there, wrapped up in each other, but the sun has long since set by the time they’re all calm enough to pull apart.

“How?” Korrin gasps, “what happened?”

Vilya grips his chin and pulls him in for a kiss that any other moment in her life, Keyleth would be embarrassed to witness. It’s the kind of kiss that Vex will purposefully give Percy when she’s feeling in a teasing mood, happily trying to get a rise out of Keyleth and make her blush.

“It’s a very long story,” Vilya says, once she finally pulls back. “Or, I guess memory loss could theoretically cover the lot of it,” she shrugs, half-joking and it reminds Keyleth so much of herself that she starts sobbing all over again.

…

…

Vilya tells them the entire tale over a late dinner. Twenty-four years’ worth of a life they missed. A full continent away. Absently, when she starts to describe the adventuring party that helped her, there’s a familiarity to them that Keyleth doesn’t place for days—they sound a bit like the motley crew that Allura mentioned, a few months ago.

It takes far longer to tell her mother everything that Keyleth experienced in her absence. Some of it, Vilya has to coax out of her over the course of months, but with each new story, each gap filled in just a little more, it almost starts to feel normal. It almost starts to hurt just a little less.

The best (and worst) moment is when Keyleth takes Vilya to Whitestone to meet Vox Machina. The best, because they are the best of her, because no one will ever be able to understand her or her experiences the way that they will, not even in all of her lifetimes, she’s sure. 

It’s the worst because Vex’ahlia takes one look between them, and then her shoulders sag, and she lets out a little _oh, oh Keyleth,_ that speaks volumes. It’s the worst because then Vex takes it upon herself to tell Vilya every embarrassing thing that Keyleth has ever done. Scanlan joining in with delight. It’s made _far_ worse because now that Vex is a mother herself, she decides that Vilya needs to know every single one of Keyleth’s accomplishments in painful detail and she doesn’t shut up about it for a solid three hours. Keyleth has to grab Vesper and the twins and run out of the room in pure embarrassment only half an hour in.

When they come back, Vilya and Vex’ahlia are both clearly composing themselves and Keyleth never does manage to get out of either of them what they had been talking about.

Grog challenges Vilya to a duel and Keyleth nearly dies of embarrassment when Vilya grins, turns into a bear twice the size of Trinket, and flattens Grog into the earth. He comes up laughing happily and once Vilya changes back, hauls her up above his shoulders and decides that he likes her.

Keyleth watches every one of her friends charm their way into her mother’s heart and sits there in Whitestone, leaning back against the Sun Tree and closes her eyes.

“Heyyyyyy, Kiki,” the Sun Tree says.

“Hi,” she answers.

“How’ssss it goin’?”

“I got my mom back.”

“Ohhh, wonderful.”

“It is.”

The Sun Tree is quiet, for a moment. “You sound a little sad, though.”

“I’m not,” she says. With her eyes closed, she can say it. “I feel like I should be, though. I feel a little guilty that I’m not.”

If a tree could frown, that’s certainly what the Sun Tree does when she opens her eyes and looks up at it. It’s not the first time in her life that a plant has chastised her, and it probably won’t be the last.

“Heyyyy, Kiki,” the Sun Tree says.

“Yeah?”

“Look up at the sky.”

Keyleth does. It’s a brilliant blue, the kind that goes on forever, not a cloud in sight. Keyleth smiles and gives the Sun Tree a hug. “Thanks,” she says while it laughs.

“Are you hugging the tree?” Vilya asks, suddenly appearing next to her.

“Um,” Keyleth bites at her bottom lip, embarrassed. “Yes. I um, do that.”

Vilya looks up at the Sun Tree and smiles, then, wraps her arms around as much as she can manage. Which, given the size of the Sun Tree, isn’t much. “Me too,” she says, laughing.

“Heyyyy Mama Kiki,” the tree drawls.

“Hello,” Vilya says easily, giving it a wave. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you, too,” the Sun Tree says.

Above them, the sun shines down brightly. Vox Machina and their families are all up in the gardens, waiting for them to join the picnic. The Sun Tree is still here, happy to see Keyleth as always, as it will be for hundreds of years. For a moment, Keyleth swears that she hears a raven caw out with joy.

Her mother looks down at her and smiles, holding out a hand and offering a hand to haul her up. Keyleth takes a breath, allows herself to feel happy, and then takes her mother’s hand with a brilliant smile.

They walk together hand in hand towards the rest of Keyleth’s family, bathed in sunshine.


End file.
